The Dancing Noodles Experiment

On a weekend not long ago my daughters and I set out to do the Dancing Noodle Experiment.  We started by cooking a few fettuccine noodles until soft.  We dropped the noodles in a large canning jar.  We filled the canning jar with a 50/50 mix of vinegar and water.  My 4 year old chose a few drops of yellow food coloring to add some color to the mixture.  Next we added the key ingredient, baking soda.  We dropped in a tablespoon of baking soda.

The baking soda causes a reaction with the vinegar water mix, so be careful.  As you can see from the video above, the liquid rose and spilled out of the jar.  Give the mixture a minute to react and you'll start to see some of the noodles rise and fall.  It's not on the video, but you can add another tablespoon of baking soda to continue the reaction and get more movement in the noodles.  

Try it out yourself.  It's a very cool experiment.  Just have a towel or two handy.  :-)